5 Foot Garden Bench

Siena strikes revenge on Iona

01.01.70

Twelve times since the new millennium, Iona has made the three-hour bus trip north to Albany to face Siena. Eleven times the bus ride home has not been a pleasant one - including Monday night. Three weeks after shellacking Siena at the Garden in a 36-point win on a night when the Gaels bagged 17 three-balls, Iona wasted a brilliant start to the game before losing its shooting touch altogether as Siena rallied for a 65-62 victory over Iona at the Times Union Center in front of a crowd of 5,584. The 62 points was the lowest scoring output of the season for the Gaels, who came into the game as the No. 2 scoring team in the nation (84.8 ppg) behind only North Carolina. The loss drops Iona (15-5, 7-2 MAAC) into a three-way tie for first in the conference with both Manhattan and Loyola (Md). Siena improved to 7-13, 4-4 in MAAC play. “It’s really simple,” Iona guard Kyle Smyth said. “It’s the same problem we’ve had all year. We get up by a lot but then we don’t finish them off. We let them back into the game. We took out foot off the pedal. We have to figure out how to close teams out.” When Iona began with a 20-2 run to open the game, about the last thing the Gaels were worrying about was closing out a Saints team they throttled by 36 points in a barrage of three-pointers back on January 3 at the Garden. But maybe they should have expected things to go awry because the Saints home court in Albany has been a house of horrors for the Gaels for what seems forever. Prior to Monday night game, Iona’s last victory in Albany came back on January 24, 2006 in an 85-78 victory. Since then, nothing but grief and long bus rides back to New Rochelle. Monday night was no exception. This time it was the Gaels offense that deserted them as the quick start became just a 39-29 Iona lead at the half before the bottom dropped out after intermission. “We were up big to start in the first 5:00 but then they made a couple of shots, we got a couple of technicals (fouls) and the game kind of slowed down from there,” Iona coach Tim Cluess said. One of the technicals was particularly costly to the Gaels. It came with 1:11 left in the first half and Iona holding a 39-27 lead. Scott Machado, the nation’s assists leader, was on the bench with two fouls when he was tagged with a technical foul for apparently yelling that a Siena player had travelled on a play near the Iona bench.    Now with three fouls, Machado was forced to sit out the first five minutes of the second half and that’s when Siena made its move. “Scott gets a technical for saying their guy walked,” Cluess said. “He jumped up on the bench and all he said was their kid walked and they give him a technical. That’s his third now and it hurts us. Now we go the first 4-5 minutes of the second half without Scott in the game and that’s when they made their push and got the game within five-six points and we never regained our rhythm from there.” Siena took its first lead of the game on a three-ball by Kyle Downey (16 points) with 4:22 to play for a 58-57 Saints lead as Iona’s offense – particularly from long range – abandoned it. The Gaels shot 0-for-8 on threes in the second half and just 9-of-31 overall in the final 20 minutes. In fact the offense went into such a deep freeze that Iona managed just two field goals and five total points in the final 9:00. Randy DeZouvre gave Iona its final lead at 62-61 with 2:18 to play with a layup, but the lead was short lived as Downey knocked down a jumper with 51 seconds to play for a 63-62 Siena lead before Rob Poole bagged a pair of free throws with 10 seconds to go for the game’s final points. Iona did have one final shot at sending the game to overtime, but Smyth missed a three-pointer in the final seconds and the collapse was complete. “They made shots and 6,000 people got into the game, the momentum turned and our guys just couldn’t make plays,” said a frustrated Cluess. “We got looks, but somebody’s got to make a play. Kyle, Scott and Momo (Jones) have wide open jumps shots, somebody’s got to make one. If they’re as good as they’re supposed to be, we have to finish games better. It’s back to the drawing board.” Mike Glover led Iona with 19 points and 12 boards but shot just 6-for-14. Machado finished with 16 points and 9 rebounds while Jones added 14 points on just 7-of-20 from the field. For the game the Gaels shot just 34.4%, their worst shooting display of the year and made just 3-of-16 three-pointers, their second-worst output of the season. But the Gaels have little time to lick their wounds because next up is a Friday night clash with Fairfield in Bridgeport. The Stags were the preseason No. 2 pick in the MAAC behind Iona. “It really stings right now,” Smyth said. “But we have to put it behind us quickly and put our focus on Fairfield. If we don’t things could get real ugly up there.”

Source: New York Daily News